This invention relates to the provision of cryptographic facilities in a data processing system.
In order to be of wide use, a cryptographic facility should be designed so that it can support a range of different cryptographic algorithms. However, the users of such a facility do not normally wish to be concerned with details of the underlying cryptographic algorithms used by the facility, and most would not even wish to be concerned with the choice of cryptographic keys.
The object of the present invention is to provide a cryptographic facility which allows users to interface with the facility in an algorithm-independent manner. This permits application programs to be designed independently of the algorithms, and also allows algorithms to be modified without affecting the application programs.